So many of us in the Black community are excited that Halle Bailey is playing Ariel in the live-action interpretation of The Little Mermaid. The heartwarming reactions from Black children across the country show how important this upcoming movie is for Black people.
But, for every Black person that’s excited for Halle, just as many white people are critical.
In an interview with the Bootleg Kev Podcast that was posted on Sept. 22, Halle’s boyfriend, rapper DDG, was asked about his relationship with the talented singer and actress and how she’s handled the endless number of negative responses to her trailer as The Little Mermaid.
While he spoke about how Halle is not letting the backlash get to her, he later said, “I didn’t know people was this racist. I didn’t know this was a thing. I thought this shit was gone already. I thought Martin Luther King canceled that shit out. This shit is crazy.”
As you would imagine, many people were angry and confused about his comments, including me. If anything, racism is more prevalent than ever thanks to social media. Everyone has a voice, no matter how important or irrelevant they are, hateful people have a bigger voice than ever to spew their racist language and are allowed to hide behind a social media profile. And recently they have been louder than ever spewing their racist opinions on how a Black woman should not be allowed to play Ariel in The Little Mermaid.
Days later, the clip was shared on the Instagram of The Shade Room. In the comment section, DDG defended his “joke” saying, “I was valedictorian in highschool Obviously mlk ain’t stop racism.. it’s called exaggeration lol see this what’s wrong with our people these days. We attack each other all day everyday & no one else smh..”
DDG later shared a link to his Valedictorian speech on Twitter writing, “my last response..”
I’m sorry to break the news to DDG, but this is not going to stop the backlash that you’ve been receiving. While your comments in the interview were meant to be taken as a joke, it was extremely ignorant to even put something like this out there.
Some things are left better unsaid; this was one of them.